Battle of Sahagun

The Battle of Sahagun occurred on 21 December 1808 during the Peninsular War. The British army of John Moore engaged in a cavalry clash with Marshal Nicolas Soult's army at Sahagun, where a detachment of French troops under Cesar Alexandre Debelle was forced to surrender after a cavalry charge by the British general Henry Paget.

Background
On 4 December 1808, after a few hours of French bombardment, the Spanish leadership in Madrid called for a truce with Emperor Napoleon I; by afternoon, the French had recaptured the Spanish capital. Napoleon's troops rested around Madrid for two weeks, and he and his brother Joseph Bonaparte drafted a flurry of new legislation which would reform Spain in the image of Napoleonic France. Napoleon dispatched his forces to the far corners of the Iberian Peninsula, easily advancing in the absence of Spanish field armies. The only remaining enemy army on the peninsula was led by the talented British general John Moore, who commanded 25,000 British and Portuguese troops. Moore raced from Lisbon to Madrid with the goal of assisting in the city's relief, but his army was too late to save the city; instead, his slowness saved him from defeat. While Napoleon believed that Moore's army would embark on ships on the northern Spanish coast for evacuation to Britain, Moore intended on fighting, aided by the capture of vital French documents by Spanish guerrillas. Moore sought to strike one blow against the French before his retreat, attacking Marshal Nicolas Soult's French army as it marched north.

Battle
On 21 December, Moore's cavalry appeared out of the blue on Soult's flank, taking a French detachment completely by surprise at the village of Sahagun and capturing nearly 300. However, the British infantry were too exhausted to follow up on their victory. While Moore's attack was a success, he had given away the position of his outnumbered position to the French, forcing Moore and his army to flee from the larger French army under Soult.